There is often debate as to which of the three most post powerful socialist governments devastated and murdered the most people. Many think Mao Zedong was more powerful than either Hitler or Stalin with estimates that Mao with his 40 million murders outnumbered Hitler with his 12 million and Stalin with his 9 million deaths. Some say Mao’s numbers should be as high as 60 million deaths, but these numbers are hard to prove because much of the death was a result of starvation caused by deliberate government controls and confiscation of food supplies. Interestingly, all three of these governments were operating at the same time and periodically in conjunction with each other on a similar basic philosophy.
Mao was born in 1893 of a peasant family living in Shaoshan in the province of Hunan, China. He showed extraordinary capacity as a child and youth, being much adverse to school but a voracious reader. He was active in various political associations, particularly those that were revolutionary. When he was about 20 years of age he moved to Beijing and obtained employment at a university library where he was exposed to the thinking of those who felt that China needed to make some major changes to catch up with western dominance. Mao became involved in a study group at the library which concentrated on Marxism but he was snubbed by the intellectuals around him because of his peasant background and dialect. As he studied Marxism he came to the conclusion that application of this philosophy should be adapted to China in several major ways - class warfare being one of the major elements.
Mao’s view was that the broadest class distinction in China was between the landowners and the non- landowners. His idea was that through a violent revolutionary organization (The Communist Party) the land would be taken by force from the landowners and then redistributed. In the process of redistribution the people were allowed to occupy the land and would have the privilege to work the land but the Communist Party would have the title and control - “in the name of people”. It wasn’t long after the revolution before the people realized they were told where to work and where the proceeds of their labor were to go. The land and the people were under the control of the Party.
Mao was in on the organization of the Communist Party from the beginning and struggled for some years to get control of the party while the party was struggling to get control of the land. During the battles in which the Red Army finally overcame it’s opposition led by Jiang Kaishek, who had by then been driven to Taiwan, Mao finally emerged as a leading authority in the party with tremendous power.
When the Communist Party with Mao as the dictator initiated the economic “Great Leap Forward” in an effort to transform the country into an industrial machine, the result was disastrous. Famine set in and the starvation was taking the people by an estimated thirty million dead. This massive economic failure put Mao under pressure from within the Party. In an effort to shift the blame to other influential and intellectual persons in the Party and to remove challengers for his power he called for a “Cultural Revolution”.
In this new revolution instead of pitting the rich class against the poor he set the uneducated against the educated class, saying the educated were endeavoring to undercut the people’s government and were unpatriotic traitors in league with the western powers. The result was all the educated who could see what the Communist Party under Mao was doing were arrested and sent to labor camps or executed. Schools were shut down and anarchy reined for six years. He organized the University students into what they called the “Red Guard”; who, like small armies, were out to destroy any philosophy other than what was contained in the “red book” of Mao. Knowing that any organization was potentially a threat to his power, all and every religion was outlawed. Every one lived in terror of being named an intellectual. No one dared say anything against the all-powerful Party leaders.
Mao’s Marxist socialism still holds in many aspects of today’s Communist China. Land ownership is only by the Party, religion is still forbidden, news and communications are still heavily censored, but personal income has risen steadily since Mao died in 1976, to a point where it is almost 1/5th of what an American now enjoys. Incredibly, even though Mao’s people suffered grievously under his dictatorial power, his mausoleum where his corpse is still exhibited in a glass coffin, is reverenced on Tiananmen Square today where the students were gunned down for demonstrating without permission.
Editor’s note: For a detailed account of astonishing conditions of life in China during Mao Zedong and the Communist Party regime consult the autobiography of Jung Chang, Wild Swans.
